The present invention relates to a method of communicating in a peer to peer network.
In a peer to peer network all stations (called “peers”) have equivalent capacities and responsibilities. This concept differs from the traditional client/server architecture in which a few stations serve the others. In particular, each peer must be able to detect the others. Thus all peers can be organized into peer groups, communicate with one another, publish, and find network resources.
The context of the invention is more particularly that of hybrid peer to peer networks.
This type of network defines superpeers that are elected from among the peers and that act as servers for the ordinary peers to which they are connected, for example for indexing resources, initiating searches, and reducing traffic on the network.
For more information on the conventional hybrid peer to peer architecture, the person skilled in the art may consult the document published on the Internet at the address http://www.grouter.net/gnutella/search.htm.
Current peer to peer networks are used mainly for file sharing. This is known in the art. Such networks, although increasingly popular, nevertheless cannot guarantee that a resource (in this instance a file) is permanently available on the network. This is primarily because the topology of a peer to peer network is dynamic, since the network consists of devices connected to according to their needs or capabilities.
A fortiori, the peer to peer networks known at present do not enable a telecommunications operator to offer a function that can be provided by different peers of the network with an availability equivalent to that of a traditional centralized system.